The Vegetarian

Donde conocemos el argumento de The Vegetarian, una novela de la coreana Han Kang, premiada en Inglaterra y favorecida por las críticas de varios medios internacionales. También algo sobre home-maker y chagrin.

The Vegetarian is a South Korean three-part drama novella written by Han Kang and first published in 2007. Based on Kang's 1997 short story "The Fruit of My Woman", The Vegetarian is set in modern-day Seoul and tells the story of Yeong-hye, a home-maker, whose decision to stop eating meat after a bloody, nightmarish dream about human cruelty leads to devastating consequences in her personal and domestic life.

It has been translated into nine languages, including English, French, Spanish, and Cantonese. Time included the book in its list of best books of 2016.

The Vegetarian was Han's second book to be translated into English. The translation was conducted by the British translator Deborah Smith. The translation was published in January 2015 in the UK and February 2016 in the US, after which it received international critical acclaim, with critics praising Kang's writing style and Smith's translation. In May 2016, it won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.

Plot

The Vegetarian tells the story of Yeong-hye, a home-maker who, one day, suddenly decides to stop eating meat after having experienced human brutality in a nightmarish dream. This abstention leads her to excuse herself from a number of common human activities including the essential process of daily food intake, and eventually a radical refusal of human cruelty and destruction. It is told in three parts - "The Vegetarian", "Mongolian Mark", and "Flaming Trees" - narrated respectively by the protagonist's husband, her brother-in-law, and her sister.

"The Vegetarian"

Yeong-hye's husband, Mr. Cheong considers his wife to be "completely unremarkable in any way" just before he realizes that she has stopped eating meat, a rarity in the patriarchal society of South Korea. He chooses to marry her since he thinks she would prove to be a good, dutiful wife who would listen to his directions and follow the rules of the society by being an even-more-dutiful daughter-in-law. Yeong-hye initially spends her days reading, much to her husband's chagrin, and doing daily chores. A few weeks later, Mr. Cheong comes back home to find that his newly-wed wife has thrown out all meat products from their refrigerator. Mr. Cheong asks for an explanation, and Yeong-hye replies that she has had a dream in which she was a plant.

Vocabulario

Home-maker: home engineer, family manager, home economist, wife and mother (synonyms)

Most people find the term housewife perfectly acceptable. But it is sometimes perceived as insulting, perhaps because it implies a lowly status (“She’s just a housewife”) or because it defines an occupation in terms of a woman's relation to a man. Homemaker is a fairly common substitute.

Chagrin: annoyance, irritation, embarrassment, dissatisfaction.

Para saber

Deborah Smith (born 15 December 1987) is a British translator of Korean fiction. Smith began learning Korean in 2010. Smith founded Tilted Axis Press, a non-profit publishing house focusing on contemporary fiction specifically from Asia.

Recursos

Read an interview to Deborah Smith on her translations and new business. Quite interesting!

Deborah Smith, Literary Translator

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